So many words like that had run through my mind for years, but saying them aloud, to an actual person, was very, very scary.
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “I’m … I am … it’s just that knowing it and saying it are … different. You know?”
When I looked up into Coco’s eyes, I saw them beginning to tear up, and evidently that was not okay with her because she shoved me towards the bed as she reached into one of her arm-length gloves and pulled out a cell phone. “You just sit there while I make a few phone calls. We’ve got to get you a suit jacket, and I ain’t walking through a field of cow shit with someone in Payless shoes. Those cheap motherfuckers. She gets Vera Wang and you’re wearing Payless freaking shoes!”
After I gave up trying to argue that there was nothing wrong with nondesigner shoes and clothes, Coco sent me to go take a shower.
Since Coco didn’t have her purse, I paid for us to take the 6 Train. One of the great things about living in New York City is that you can get on a subway on the relatively conservative Upper East Side with an uber-glamorous drag queen, and other than a few happily scandalized tourists, no one bats an eye. One elderly Russian lady asked how Coco managed to walk in such high heels, but her husband said, “If your legs had ever looked like that, you would have found a way.” For a second I thought she was going to hit him, but then she just blew out her cheeks and said he was probably right.
When a seat opened up, a rather handsome Dominican man motioned to it with a, “Ladies first,” and Coco flirted with him so hard I finally understood what it meant for people to eye-fuck. Luckily he got off at the next stop, or I’m not sure she would have said a word to me.
“Whew,” Coco said, after her eyes had followed him down the platform as far as she could. “I was afraid he was going to give me a hard-on while I’m tucked.”
“What’s tucked?” I asked.
Coco looked at me with slight exasperation before saying, “Child, did they have you locked up in that attic? Because no kid that grows up in New York City is that damn innocent. What do you think tucked means?”
My eyes briefly went to the crotch of her dress.
“That’s right, baby. Men do not appreciate what a beautiful woman goes through.”
I figured this wasn’t the time to ask why, exactly, she felt the need to put in all of that effort to look like the sex other than the one she had been born. Being gay had certainly never made me want to dress or look like a woman. But to each his or her own, right?
Instead, I said, “So you still haven’t told me how we’re supposed to get into this high security event.”
“I told you not to worry about that. What I want to know is why everyone else in your family gets to go, but you don’t.” She bent over to pointedly look down at my inexpensive shoes, as a way of pointing out that she was following my request to drop that topic.
I explained all about Iris being my stepmom, and dad’s death, and so on and so forth, but when I finished, Coco just said, “Okay, so money is tight. I certainly understand that, trust. But why spend the money for them to go? Let alone the money that Vera Wang gown set y’all back. Lordy!”
“Okay, well, first, Iris had to sell one of her last pieces of serious jewelry to pay for that dress, and don’t think she doesn’t remind Kimberly of it every time she can, even though Kimberly kept saying she could get something cheaper. But Iris said ‘there was no way she was having those other bitches at the ball talk trash about her daughter because she didn’t have as good a dress as anyone else there.’”
“I’m starting to respect this Iris,” Coco said with an emphatic nod.
“So, anyway, Iris has it in her head that since Kimberly is so beautiful—”
“I was far away when they got in the cab. Is she really that pretty?”
“She’s gorgeous,” I said. “I’m not saying that makes her a good person or anything, but she is sort of stunning. On the outside, at least.”
“Go on,” Coco said tapping me on the forearm.
“Anyway, now that Kimberly is starting NYU, and J.J. Kennerly is a sophomore at Columbia …”
I stopped because a faraway look had come over Coco’s face, and I could tell she wasn’t listening anymore. “What’s wrong?”
Coco snapped back to attention. “Oh, nothing, you said the name J.J. Kennerly. That man is so beautiful, I just had to take a moment and picture him. Although, probably not a good idea while I’m tucked, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I think I’ve figured it out, thanks.”
“So, what, Iris thinks if J.J. Kennerly sees Kimberly all dressed up in some Vera Wang maybe she can get a date or something?”
“Oh, no. Iris wants them to get married.”
“Married? Is she cray-cray?”
“Well, Fontaine is a pretty big name in the Social Registry and that sort of thing, so it’s not that crazy of an idea, and Iris will do just about anything to get back to her former glory.”
“Ooh, it’s all so Jane Austen, isn’t it?”
“You read Jane Austen, too?” I asked. It would be nice to know that we had something in common besides being gay.
“No,” Coco said. “But I’ve seen a couple of the movies.”
Then she grabbed my arm and jumped up. “This is our stop.” A gang-banger type stupidly tried to step in front of her to get to the door first, so quick as a whip she stomped the heel of her stiletto into the toe of his shoe. “Oops. So sorry. Pardon me.” She smiled at him in a way that was both polite and a threat, and he let us both pass. I have to say if I ever get caught in a fight between a group of gang-bangers and a group of drag queens, I might want to be on the side of the drag queens.
Especially once I saw the first of Coco’s friends. Special Kaye Ballard was a six-and-a-half-foot tall, red-wigged Amazon, dressed to compliment Coco—one of the backup Supremes to Coco’s Diana Ross. As we emerged from the subway, she was standing at the top of the stairs holding a suit jacket and a pair of men’s black shoes.
“You’re the best,” Coco said as they air kissed. “Mama loves you.”
“We’d better hurry,” Special Kaye said. “Aphra Behn is getting antsy.”
“That bitch always goes Norma Desmond before a performance,” Coco said, taking the jacket from Special Kaye and helping me into it. I felt slightly uncomfortable about the way this new drag queen was looking me up and down, but when she said, “Mm-mm-mm, what a cutie,” I couldn’t really pretend I hadn’t heard it, so even though I blushed, I said, “Thank you.”
Special Kaye started fanning herself. “You know that blush would go perfectly with my red hair.”
“Hands off, you wretched old queen,” Coco said. “This little innocent has already had enough shocks for one evening.”
“But the night is so young.”
“And so is he.” Coco stopped adjusting the jacket on me and looked Special Kaye dead in the eyes. “I’m serious.”
Special Kaye held up her hands, with a shoe in each. “Okay, okay, I get it. No chicken for dinner.”
“Good. And make sure Aphra Behn knows it, too.”
Special Kaye turned to me and said, “You won’t have to worry about her. She prefers buzzards, all wrinkled and stringy.”
I was a little confused, but before I could give it too much thought, Coco was kneeling down and telling me to lift my foot. Within seconds the shoes I’d worn had been carelessly tossed aside, and I was standing in a fancy pair of black leather shoes that looked and felt very expensive. There was just one problem.
“Um, these are way too big,” I said.
Coco and Special Kaye both looked at me like I’d just farted in front of the Queen of England. Then they looked at each other, as if to confirm that their ears had not deceived them, and finally back to me.
“Baby,” Coco said, “those are Ferragamo. If you don’t think your feet are big enough to fill what you have so graciously been given, then I will gladly stop a cab driver and ask him to drive over sai
d feet until they swell up enough, understand?”
“Um … they’re perfect?” I said.
“That’s better. Now let me see you walk in them.”
I took a step, and the shoe immediately slipped off.
“Taxi!” Coco said.
“Wait!” I said. “Wait, just give me a chance to figure it out.” Thus began an awkward couple of minutes while two impatient drag queens crossed their arms over their busts and watched me learn out how to walk in shoes that were way too large for my feet. Finally I thought I had the hang of it, but when I turned around to proudly walk back in their direction, somehow I kicked off one of the shoes, and it barely missed hitting Coco.
Slow as dial-up, she bent down to retrieve the shoe, then held it out to me. “If I can make walking in five-inch heels look easy, the least you can do is keep these damn things on your feet.”
“We should go,” I said. “I’m ready. Really. Besides, you still haven’t told me how we’re supposed to get into this thing, so why should I worry about—”
“Little one,” Special Kaye said, throwing her arms above her head in a show-stopping gesture, “we’re the entertainment!”
Confused, I turned to Coco. “Wait, what? You mean you’re invited to this thing?”
“Invited?” Coco said. “Honey, we get paid to be here.” She and Special Kaye cackled as they high-fived. “Let’s go.”
We started on our way, but then I remembered, “My shoes!”
Coco rolled her eyes, and then told me to wait right where I was. She walked back to where my old shoes had been abandoned, picked them up, and headed towards us. But then, as she passed a trash bin, she tossed them in, wiping her hands dramatically as she looked me directly in the eye.
I had a couple blocks to practice walking in the new shoes, and I thought I was getting the hang of it, even if I was dragging behind a little bit. By the time we rounded the corner to The Plaza’s service entrance, I was feeling pretty proud of myself since I hadn’t thrown a shoe in over a block.
Waiting with a hand on her hip and a perturbed look on her face was a much shorter and chubbier version of Special Kaye, also with a matching red wig. “Finally!” Aphra Behn said. “You’re later than my first period!”
CHAPTER 3
FIVE-INCH HEELS AND OTHER SHOES
Jeremy, the earpiece-wearing, clipboard-holding, maybe five-foot-six assistant entertainment coordinator looked like he was about two hyperventilated breaths away from an anxiety attack when Coco informed him I was part of their entourage. “But he doesn’t have security clearance!” I could almost see the vein on the left side of his forehead expand as his blood pressure rose. “You can’t do this to me!”
“Honey, relax,” Coco said, putting a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “He ain’t going to hurt anybody, but I don’t think he’ll sue if you want to have someone frisk him.”
Special Kaye Ballard’s arm shot up to volunteer, but Coco turned a droll eye on her. “You’ve already been warned once.”
Jeremy wiped a hand over his moistening brow. “Well, I’ll at least need a driver’s license or something so that they can run a check.”
Coco looked at me. “Do you drive?”
I shook my head. “Living in Manhattan? I only have my school ID.”
I started to take it out, which Jeremy was in the process of telling me not to bother doing, when he stopped as he saw it.
“You go to McVities?”
I nodded as I handed it over. He looked down at his clipboard. “Are you sure you’re not on the guest list already?”
“I’m pretty sure,” I said. Jeremy pursed his lips in annoyance, then turned to walk over to a muscular man in a black suit, who I assumed was part of the security force.
I turned to Coco to find her looking at me with a raised eyebrow. “Vera Wang and McVities Prep, just how much jewelry is Iris selling?”
“I’m there on scholarship.”
“McVities has scholarships?”
“Under special circumstances …” I said. Or at least in my one special circumstance. The combination of Iris’s family name, my test scores, and my dad’s new wealth had managed to get me into McVities for my freshman year. Buck and Kimberly, of course, were already students there, although Buck had almost had to transfer to Choate when he flunked his sophomore year. My first year had been paid for by the time of my father’s death. While there was never any question of her biological children continuing to attend the expected academy of their ilk as long as Iris had things to sell off, I had worried that I might have been fighting along with everyone else to get into Eleanor Roosevelt or Hunter once that first year ended. However, since I was number one in my class and had the highest test scores, Principal Baskin found it in his statistics-loving heart to find a way for me to stay at the school. As long as my scholastic performance didn’t slip, of course. (Now you see why I went to so many study groups?) Since Kimberly and Buck had both just graduated in May (thanks to his having to repeat that sophomore year), and I was now in my senior year, I had only about eight more months of 24/7 stress. Well, assuming I could figure out what I wanted to do with my life once I graduated. I was applying to colleges, of course, but in a rather nebulous, what-else-was-I-supposed-to-do way. I don’t think I was the only high school senior who ever felt like that
Special Kaye cleared her throat. “Um, if you’re still in high school, exactly how old are you?”
“Seventeen,” I said.
She held up her hands and took several steps away from me.
“But I’ll be eighteen soon,” I said, not really thinking through how she might interpret the information. I was just excited by the idea of actually qualifying as an adult, at least from a chronologically legal standpoint.
“Oh, really,” she said. She stepped closer. Much closer.
Coco slipped a gloved hand between me and Special Kaye, looking up into her much taller friend’s heavily made up face. “Bitch, you are one pair of scissors away from going drag queen to post-op, understand?”
“What makes you so sure he doesn’t want a bowl of Special Kaye for breakfast on his birthday, huh? Maybe he doesn’t care for Coco Puffs.”
Coco slowly closed her eyes, as if asking for patience, as she licked her lips. “I’m pretty sure this one is looking for a man who doesn’t have dresses in his closet. Or fake Jimmy Choos.”
“I told you, those were not fake.”
“Jimmy Choo does not make a woman’s shoe big enough for a man’s size 13 foot!”
“Ladies!” This time it was Aphra Behn putting a hand between Special Kaye and Coco. “Mr. Hypertension is on his way back.”
We all turned to find Jeremy waving us towards the entrance. “Well, he doesn’t have a police record, but if anything goes wrong tonight, you will never work in this town again. I’m not joking. Because I will kill you.” He handed me back my ID with a gracious smile. “Have a lovely evening.” Then he dropped the smile. “But I seriously will kill you if you do anything wrong in there. You understand that, right?”
I nodded as I was pushed through a metal detector.
Now if you’re thinking we then entered a gorgeous ballroom decorated with glittery lights and the orange, red, and yellow tones which the night’s theme called for, well, then you’ve never been through a service entrance. It was a long, wide hallway of painted gray cinderblock. Service people of every imaginable stripe scurried about through an obstacle course of stacked chairs, racks of glasses, trays of food, cases of liquor and wine, and flatbeds loaded with just about every imaginable party item of which an event coordinator could think.
Eventually we were shown into a dressing “room,” which consisted of four “walls” made of metal racks with curtains hanging from them, a lighted makeup mirror and table, and one chair. “One chair for the three of us?” Coco said to Jeremy.
Jeremy waved for Coco to be quiet as he listened with a panicked expression to someone through his earpiece. “Uh-huh, yeah, sure, no prob
lem!” Jeremy said into his sleeve. Then he turned to us, yelled, “Crap!” and ran off at Olympic-caliber speed.
The four of us who remained all looked down at the one chair.
“We don’t go on for almost an hour,” Special Kaye said.
“I had to walk a lot more in these heels than I’d planned on,” Coco said.
“Well, I was on time, so I’ve already been here for an hour,” Aphra Behn said.
“Um,” I said, “we passed several stacks of chairs on our way here. Do you think we could use a few of those?”
They looked at me like I was Einstein suggesting the Theory of Relativity.
“I love you even more now,” Special Kaye said.
Coco put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll cut off her dick by the time you get back, I promise.”
“Are you sure it’ll be okay? I don’t want Jeremy murdering me because I borrowed a few chairs.”
Coco pointed at her feet. “Five. Inch. Heels.”
I actually didn’t have to go very far to find the closest chairs, but while running the errand I learned two interesting things. First, I discovered that I hadn’t adapted to my new shoes as well as I’d thought, because while I was okay keeping them on when walking was the only thing I had to think about, the second I picked up three stack-chairs and tried not to bump into anyone or anything, the right shoe somehow slipped off and shot through an open doorway.
I froze, waiting for loud repercussions, but none came.
I placed the chairs down and tentatively eased my head into the open doorway. Several security guards were looking at a wall of black and white monitors that showed every conceivable angle of the Autumnal Ball—the ballroom, the bars, backstage, the kitchen, the red carpet, you name it. As I bent down low and stretched my arm to retrieve the shoe, which had stopped just shy of the console, one of the guards barked, “Don’t even!”
My heart stopped. Luckily my bladder control did not.
I looked up slowly to find … that they hadn’t even noticed me. The guard was pointing at the one of the screens showing the red-carpet arrivals. “Damn, that Kennerly woman is a MILF!”
My Fairy Godmother is a Drag Queen Page 3